Lam. 1-2 - sad

Wow, so here we are. First post since June...

I suppose I should preface this by offering something by way of explanation for the huge absence. Well, it was a combination of a lot of things, including a horrendously unreliable Internet connection at home, various trips, etc, getting in the way of keeping on time with readings and finding time to post and other sundry things.

Most of all, though, it was because I could not for the life of me figure out what to do about blogging through the Psalms at such a quick rate. Anyway, the stagnation continued through Proverbs... and Song of Solomon... and Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah...

They're all good books. You should read them. No, I'm not going to try to offer any sort of post/summary on  any of them. They're gone. The only way this blog will continue to live is if I just pick up from here and try to make another run at it.

Now, on to matters at hand: Lamentations.



It's funny (not 'ha ha' funny, mind you - the other kind) how by the end of Jeremiah you're so used to hearing threats and stories of utter destruction and warfare that you've more or less grown a bit numb to them. Aside from the fact that in those two epic books they're usually talked about in such broad sweeping terms that it's a little like watching one of those animated maps that show the various empires conquering and reconquering Europe - you get the point, but it all ends up just being politics and colours by the time you're done watching.

Then you start Lamentations and, as the name might suggest, you're in for a real downer.

I find it especially striking that the focus right from the start is not piles of dead bodies, or the chaos of warfare, but it's just the tangible absence of life that is the focus: "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people."

The surreal peace of a deserted city, whether it's a normally busy street at 3 a.m. and empty or the site of some disaster area, or just a ghost town, new or old, is disquieting in its quiet, but it's also an unconventional thing to write about when talking about a disaster. Usually the focus is on the disaster itself, and by the time the aftermath sets in, attention spans have been used up and focus has drifted elsewhere.

Maybe that's why Lamentations is captivating (pardon the pun...) from the beginning - it's an unconventional look at what we all take for granted on the evening news (or the anytime news on the Interwebs...)

There's something else that's a bit unconventional in terms of sorrow after a disaster. There's a piety in the despair of Lamentations. At no point (at least in the opening pair of chapters) do you get a sense that the author is crying foul while lamenting the fate of Jerusalem. A lot of emphasis is actually placed on the deservedness of the whole thing - Judah's great sin, Israel's idolatry, etc.

There's a kind of purity in the sadness that Lamentations presents, devoid of whining, resentment and even bitterness*. Normally, (and I can't say for sure that it's just a modern trait, because while it's tempting to pass off anything negative as being innovative, an awful lot of what people do now, people have been doing for quite a long time...) public sadness is followed (or, more often, simply paired) with anger, resentment and bitterness. There are repeated cries of how unfair life is, there is wallowing, and there is an immediate search for some sort of scapegoat to take the blame for everything that's happened.

In the first two chapters of Lamentations, we don't get any of that - we just get sadness. Sadness about the causes of the disaster, and sadness about the result. There's sadness about the isolation involved in having all of your surrounding enemies (and allies, for that matter) turning against you in an overwhelming tide of opposition and sadness about the fall from such great and respected heights on the international stage.

Maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that a book called Lamentations should be primarily about sadness, but there's something interesting to me about the way it's presented and experienced by the author. We'll see if that keeps up throughout, but I'm more interested in reading this book than I've ever been before...

*(There is, actually, a touch of bitterness, but it's still presented in the form of a sort of piety, since it talks about God's proclamation that Israel/Judah's enemies would be brought just as low once God's done with them in their turn...)